Patient Management

Patient Management: Adherence Management Tool

January 24, 2019 19:03

The Adherence Management Tool ensures patient adherence by providing product alternatives to your patients should a product become unavailable. This article will go over when a product is considered to be at-risk, how patients are affected by a swap, and how to perform a swap

In this article:

Adherence Management

Maintaining patient adherence is a challenge most practitioners face. Technology and digital tools can help improve patient adherence, so it’s beneficial for both practitioners, and patients.

We have introduced the Product Swapping tool to the Fullscript platform to swap out at-risk products that may affect patient treatment. At-risk products are those that have been removed from the Catalog, discontinued by the supplier, or products that are temporarily unavailable due to a vendor backorder. In short, these products may not be available when the customer attempts to refill.

Previously, customers would notify their practitioners if a product was unavailable, but with the Adherence Management Tool, you can get ahead of these requests by swapping out products as their status changes and notify impacted patients by email (optional) as well as within their account.

At-Risk Product Alerts

When a product is considered to be at-risk, a banner will be displayed in the Catalog to signal that a product swap may be needed. Only products that have ordered or prescribed (including edits to existing prescriptions), in the last 3 months will appear in the Adherence tool. However, swapping a product will affect all impacted prescriptions and order history not limited to those created in the last three months.

Note: All products may not be suitable for all patients, and a swap cannot be customized to apply only to specific patients or prescriptions. Jump to Customized Product Swaps below for more information.

These at-risk products will also be accessible to swap through the tool itself. To access the adherence management tool, go to the Catalog and select Adherence to view products eligible to swap as well as your swap history.

Customized Product Swaps

A swap cannot be customized to impact select prescriptions such as those created within a specified time frame or those created after a specified date. Further, select prescriptions and patients cannot be exempt from a swap.

When a swap is not compatible for all impacted patients or prescriptions, changes will need to be made individually to those that are not a fit for the swap being applied. These select changes can be made from Related Patients.

To view Related Patients:

From the Catalog, select Adherence

Select Swaps Needed

Choose an at-risk product

Select Related Patients

From here, select edit from the actions column to make necessary changes to a select prescription.

Swapping a Product

Product swaps take only a few minutes to complete and will be visible to your patients when they log in to view their prescriptions or past orders.

Product swaps where many related prescriptions and patients are affected may take longer to complete. It's important not to navigate away from the page until the swap has finished.

Swap with a Similar Product

To ease the process of swapping products for our practitioners, IMAT (our Integrative Medical Advisory Team) has curated similar products for most products in the catalog. A maximum of three products may be listed as suggestions for any product swap, however, you may see less where fewer than three similar products are available as alternatives. These suggestions are displayed in order of popularity, determined by the total MSRP generated from past orders through Fullscript.

To swap an at-risk product with a similar product:

Go to the Catalog and click Adherence

From Swaps Needed, choose from one of the similar products curated by IMAT by selecting Swap with this product

Enable the optional email to alert affected patients of the change

Click Mass swap these products

Tip! To learn more about a product, click on its name to view the description, list of ingredients, available sizes, and more. When you’re finished, click the back button in your browser to return to the Swaps Needed screen.

Swap with a Product from the Catalog

Although similar products will be displayed as suggestions for the product swap, selecting one of these products isn’t necessary.

If you'd rather swap with a product from the catalog:

From Adherence, select Swaps Needed

Select Swap with a product in the catalog and search for another product

Enable the optional email to alert affected patients of the change

Click Mass swap these products

Reverse a Product Swap

When a product swap has been made, it will appear under Swapped Products within the Adherence page. This will show a history of swapped products, as well as allow you to reverse a swap in the event a preferred product is no longer at-risk.

To revert a product swap:

From Adherence, go to Swapped Products

Locate the swap to reverse

Click Unswap. The change will be reflected in patient accounts immediately.

Tip! If you know you will revert a swap once the at-risk product becomes available again, consider requesting a product notification from our Customer Success team - soon to be available within your account!

View Related Patients

Prescriptions impacted by at-risk products can be viewed within Adherenceaccessible through the Catalog. To view clients impacted by an at-risk product:

Go to the Catalog and select the Adherence tab

Select Swaps Needed

Choose an at-risk product

Select Related Patients

From here, select edit to make changes to a select prescription when a swap may not be suitable for every patient.

Warning: Since a swap will impact all related patients and prescriptions, changes to select prescriptions should be made prior to a swap taking place where the swap is not suitable for all patients.

Patient Notifications

Email Notification of Swap

During the product swap process, dispensary owners will be provided with an option to send an email to all patients affected by the change. An example of this email is below.

Replacement Notice in Patient Prescriptions

In addition to this optional email, a notice of the swap will be visible to patients within affected prescriptions. As we can see, the replacement product is listed with a notice of the change as well as the product it replaced, but the replaced product can no longer be ordered.

Swap Alert in Past Orders

Patients who have ordered the product in the past, but did not have a prescription for the product, will be displayed a similar alert in their order history. Again, the replacement product is presented and the at-risk product can no longer be ordered.